PAW Lunch Talk: Athenian Society during the First Millennium BCE from an Archaeogenetic Perspective

Our understanding of the development of Athenian society during the early first millennium BCE has long relied primarily on archaeological evidence, especially funerary remains, and on textual sources of mostly later date. Bioarchaeological data, by contrast, have remained scarce. Archaeological research has traditionally focused on the spatial organization of cemeteries, grave typologies, mortuary practices and rituals, as well as the style and iconography of grave markers. Yet fundamental questions about the social fabric of early Athenian kinship practices and human mobility remain unresolved. What social units did burial plots represent? To what extent did biological kinship shape the organization of cemeteries? How were individuals of different sex, age, origin etc. buried – within the same plot, across different plots, or in neighboring cemeteries?

Within the ongoing collaboration of the Ephorates of Athens and Attica and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, we have generated archaeogenetic data from more than 200 individuals recovered from cemeteries across Attica dating to the first millennium BCE, with a particular focus on the renowned cemetery of Phaleron. In my lecture, I present the current state of the project and explore how ancient DNA is transforming our understanding of social organization, kinship structures, mobility, and marital practices in Early Iron Age Attica.

Philipp Stockhammer is Professor for prehistoric archaeology with a focus on the Eastern Mediterranean at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Munich and co-director of the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig. In 2008, he earned his PhD at Heidelberg University. He continued to work as a postdoctoral researcher at Heidelberg until 2016 and received his venia legendi at the University of Basel in 2013. He received an ERC Starting Grant in 2015 and an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2020. He is PI or Co-PI of several collaborative research projects on the Bronze and Early Iron Ages in Central and Southeastern Europe, the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean. His research focuses on the transformative power of intercultural encounters, social practices and the integration of archaeological and scientific data concerning social belonging, mobility, food and health. He edited 11 volumes, published 2 books and 149 articles, 49 of them peer-reviewed – among them 20 articles as corresponding author in high-end peer-reviewed journals like Nature, Science, Cell and PNAS. He is a corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute, fellow of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and member of the Center for Advanced Studies at LMU Munich, the Steering Committee of the Munich Centre for Global History and the Israel Center at LMU Munich. Moreover, he is also very engaged in public outreach, being actively involved in the production of documentaries as well as video games informing broad audiences about latest archaeological research.

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